GPOYS.

Your Friend in Time.

No matter what, your life is going to change. The places where you spent your childhood will disappear. Tragedy will strike when least expected. The people you love the most will die, drift away, or leave. Your professional career will hit multiple snags; chances are you’ll be fired or the company you work for will shutter or you will move on to greener pastures at least once. Moment to moment your future is filled with an infinite number of possibilities, and no matter how much you prepare the world will dole out surprises, both excellent and terrible. You’re going to have to roll with the punches, because even your grand plans for tomorrow are not assured.

But your past is immutable. Back there the world is forever fixed, your good days marking a life well-lived, your bad days becoming learning experiences. There are momentous decisions that forever altered your path. There are people you loved with your whole heart, and who gave you the happiest times of your life. If you look far enough back, if you really think about it, you’ll find the people, places, and things in your life who made you who you are.

The Back to the Future movies offer a comforting alternative. What if you had a time machine that allowed you to shape the past into something better? Your parents hipper, your car cooler, the coming years filled with flying cars and computer-controlled excellent weather; there is nothing you could not make into reality with a quick trip to 1955. It would all be cosmetic. If you had a Delorean at your ready disposal, you couldn’t change what shaped you. Your world will turn, leaving you looking for something familiar in strange surroundings. Your hometown can turn from a slum into a city of promise and back again. Old enemies can suddenly be trusted, old friends and loved ones can disappear unexpectedly. Through it all, you are always you. What you’ve experienced, and the lessons you’ve learned, will stay with you forever.

Marty McFly can change the past all he wants, but he stays consistent. In fact, he only acts as an agent of change for those around him. His continual meddling with space-time turns his timid flunky father into a confident success, and then into a dead man, and finally back into that success. His mother is married off to a villain, his best friend is shipped to a mental hospital, his town reduced to a disaster area. Even when he fixes his mistakes, creating a better future for all around him, he doesn’t change immediately. He’s the same Marty, uneasy in his current life yet wary of rejection. If he put his mind to it, he could accomplish anything, but at times he seems unable, or at best unwilling. This is true no matter which 1985 we encounter. Note that even with the improved McFly residence of the first Back to the Future, not a single piece of Marty’s room has changed. His decisions are static, even down to the container of off-brand candies he keeps by his bed. No amount of travel in the Delorean will make him a better man. He has to learn first.

When Marty consciously avoids the road race that would permanently injure him at the end of Part III, we’re seeing the final evolution of his character. This revelation would not happen solely through chronological manipulation. Marty can’t be born in good fortune like his brother and sister. Dave and Linda are products of the time stream, their pasts reflecting a world where the McFly scion is a famous writer, and a confident and noble man to boot. Marty, misfit youngest child, friend to eccentric inventor Emmet Lathrop Brown, reticent rock star, had to take an entirely different route. His past doesn’t change with the new reality; as the time-traveling agent he remembers the McFly home with the alcoholic mother and pushover dad. He couldn’t stand up to Biff Tannen, his plan to get the McFlys together at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance falling victim to the bully’s drunken rage. If it wasn’t for the strength and tenacity of his father, the newly-empowered George McFly of 1955, Marty would have faded from reality altogether. At the end of the first Back to the Future it’s those without the trauma of the past who excel and save the day. Back to the Future is George McFly’s story, demonstrating how the opportunity to be a hero, even if only given once, can change a person’s whole life for the better.

The youngest McFly does not actually learn anything in the first film. Actually, he is a weaker character in the sequel, more prone to lashing out or acting on a wrong impulse. The second film is Marty’s story, and it’s a narrative fueled by terror and uncertainty. His last adventure ended in an improved world for the McFlys, but Marty can’t live in that future yet. His past includes memories of his best friend shot dead, of the overbearing bully who ruins his family’s life over three decades, of his do-nothing parents and his listless siblings. While his future looks bright, there is nothing to tell Marty that it will be anything less than fleeting. That’s why the repeated calls of “chicken” bother him so much. There has yet to be a redemptive moment for him, and there is an urge to show that he is every bit the man his new father is. Marty is scared of turning into the old George. His past tells him that it’s far more likely to be a waste, a coward, or a slacker than it is to be a success. His family and his friends are unburdened by similar memories, driven to excel through most of their lives. What Marty sees is an immediate change, and he wants it too. The Sports Almanac which drives the plot of the second half of Part II is McFly’s attempt to jump-start his own excellent future; after all, wealth can open doors which remain shut to most others. This quick-fix self-reliance backfires, and soon that wealth is in the hands of a jumpsuit-clad tyrant, a man who systematically ruins everything Marty loves. It is only when he is penitent for his mistakes, when he acknowledges what has gone wrong in his past rather than trying to jury-rig his future, that Marty is finally able to move forward and begin to forge permanently a good life for himself and those around him.

The main result of this change is the lack of violence in his character. Much of the actions taken by Marty in the first two films involve actively punching someone or steering them into a barrier that will cause them harm. He punches Biff, trips him, sends his car flying into a manure truck (twice). A similar fate befalls Griff in the now-famous hoverboard chase. When it comes time to face Mad Dog, Marty realizes that it would do no good to draw a gun. The third member of the Tannen family he faces leaves Marty with a choice: stand tall or die. The actions of the first three movies culminate in a vision of Marty’s own demise, a snapshot of his own tombstone seven decades later, forgotten by the world. That’s all he would get for the ultimate act of violence against a villain. Marty has been quick to take the first move, ready to lash out at anyone he feels is threatening his world. Death eludes him several times, but it will come for Marty McFly sooner rather than later if he doesn’t learn from his past. It’s true that his father changed his whole life with one punch, but that motion was in defense, in protecting the woman who would become the love of his life. George’s reaction was a matter of honor and a shift in his character, whereas his son’s default notion of violence is a nod towards cowardice. Marty knows no other way to react until he learns from his own past. That’s what is remarkable about his decision to avoid racing Needles when he returns to 1985. Marty’s past, blindly followed, leads him careening into another car at an intersection, busting his hand and making sure he stays in that horrible job in 2015. If he doesn’t learn, then his future is predetermined. Since he grows, then he can make his future a good one.

Jennifer Parker, Marty’s shape-shifting girlfriend, greets our protagonist as bookends on the series. Think of their encounters at the end of the first and third movies. Claudia Wells’ Jennifer meets McFly as he preens over his new truck; his attention is focused on his new-found good fortune. When Marty rushes to Elizabeth Shue’s Jennifer at the end of Part III, his focus is completely on her. His attire has changed as well, slipping from the iconic Shah Safari threads of 1985 to a classic Clint Eastwood cowboy getup. He’s no longer self-centered, the worry and doubt drained from him. Marty takes three movies to arrive at a destination where he’s a man rather than a boy, ready to admit his past mistakes and stop looking for the easy way out. There’s no more time machine, no more messing about in the past to grab the future with no pain or suffering. It’s not about material possessions or the yearning to prove oneself. Now it’s about those around him.

What’s the one souvenir McFly takes from his journey across one hundred and thirty years? A photograph of him and Doc Brown. That’s the only outward mark of the epic adventure. As far as the world is concerned, George McFly has always been the author of A Match Made in Space, and Biff Tannen has always been the erstwhile bully who channeled his rage into auto detailing. Anything past that point, up to and including the proof Jennifer once held of Marty’s future career sabotage, is now up for grabs. When Doc Brown declares gleefully that no one’s future is set, he never mentions the past. He doesn’t have to; without the machine that can trick someone into thinking their previous personal timeline is mutable, then all one can do is look into their own memories to inform a better future for themselves. Marty will make the right decisions because he’s already had time to make the wrong ones.

As we stare into the picture of the time travelers, we’re informed of the most important thing Marty has learned: we’re never guaranteed that next time with the people we love. The journey began for him as he saw Doc murdered in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. He lived it over again in the lot of Lone Pine Mall. He’s stood over the graves of his best friend and his father, and he’s had a near-death experience three times over. No one is going to be there every time you need them. Sometimes you’ll have to make it on your own.

Friends, family, partners, lovers, every person who has touched your life, who has shaped your past to the point where you are confident and strong and ready: these are the people you are going to miss when they’re gone. They are the reason you no longer rush into confrontations when you’re called Chicken. They taught you how to get it right the first time, and how to learn from your mistakes when you mess it up anyway. They are your friends in time. There’s no device for you to go back and see them again, to say one more time that you love them. But they’ll be with you always. Even if you can’t talk to them, the lessons they instilled will travel with you into your uncertain future.

“It means your future hasn’t been written yet! No one’s has! Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one. Both of you.”

Every one of you has your own Doc Brown, your own personal George McFly, Lorraine Baines, Biff Tannen, Jennifer Parker. They might still be with you. They might be long gone from your life. They are still your past. And they’d want you to know that your future isn’t written. Make it a good one.